Joyce

James Joyce is recognised as a major figure in the literary scene of the first quarter of the twentieth century, and was probably the most important experimental novelist of the period. His effort to portray the whole meaning of modern life - its fragmentation, its hidden recesses, its underlying patterns - led to a lifelong search for ways of doing so. Realism, myth, symbolisn, the 'stream of consciousness'. multiple planes of reality, all became part of an artistic process that finally involved the disruption and recreation of language itself. In this study, E. L. Goldberg traces the development of Joyce's work from the early sketches and poems, through his masterpieces to the ambitious failure of all-embracing 'history of the world', Finnegans wake. Joyce's preoccupation with the nature of art and the artist's place in society, with the understanding of life and the 'joy' he tried to express in his own art, are traced with judgement and discernment. there is an illuminating commentary on Joyce's techniques and on the main lines of Joycian criticism.